Our little butter bean.
We have been on a roller coaster of emotions for about 2 months. 2 negative tests and then a positive one. We
began to share the news immediately and were thrilled to be adding number 4 to
our clan. I never love the first trimester
of pregnancy, but the hopes of a sweet new baby make all that drama worth
it. My fears of miscarriage were
present, but different from with Hannah.
Hannah’s pregnancy was perfect and my fear of loss was unnecessarily great. My fears in this pregnancy while not absent
were less and my faith in God’s plan was greater. Mostly because when I look at my sweet Hannah’s
face I am reminded that God’s plan is best.
I know that I wouldn’t have her if I didn’t go through the first two
miscarriages. In the heartaches of life God strengthens us and teaches us. These are a few of the reminders and
revelations of God’s word that I have been given through this sweet life.
I do not understand God’s ways
We will never choose the ways
God does. We don’t choose cancer,
miscarriage, death or any other thing that comes from the fall. The Israelites would never have chosen to
walk the long way around to get to the promised land. His ways are truly higher than ours. I have those questions; I have those things
that I don’t understand. I have had
thoughts of why did I get pregnant, I would have rather not gotten pregnant
than had another miscarriage and while we are on the subject, God why do you
even allow miscarriage, can’t you just stop the pregnancy?!?!? And that’s where I stop and say I don’t
understand, I’ll never understand, it’s not my job to understand. But what I do know and understand is that God’s
word says that He works all things to the good of those who love him and are
called according to his purpose. I
choose to believe his word over my finite mind.
And no matter what I ever go through, I can always look to Job who tells
us “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD
gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” It is only
by grace and through the prayers of the body of Christ that I write this. For
in my natural self, I would be in a much different place.
Celebrate life
I have said this before in our miscarriages and I don’t care
how many more I experience, I will always celebrate life with no regret. C S Lewis says “To love at all is to be
vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If
you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even
an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all
entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But
in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be
broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to
be vulnerable.” (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves).
I can’t say this is always easy especially when you don’t know the
outcome yet. I said with faith (wanting
to give into fear) when I didn’t know if this baby would survive that I really
wanted to celebrate life and beg God for a miracle until there was no
hope. During that process I felt weak
and mostly that I was stumbling along in my faith (as we do and we need God’s
grace). I got to see my baby’s heartbeat twice, so little and helpless and I’m
so thankful God let me love this sweet baby for a short time. I’m thankful for those who celebrated with us
and were joyful with us. I will always
by the grace of God celebrate life.
His word is living
and active
Hebrews 4:12 The word of God is living and active, sharper
than any two edge sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of
joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
heart.
This is where I was in my pregnancy with Hannah.
I didn’t really know how to ask God for my baby(with Hannah). I was stifled and hindered by fear. Not that I didn’t pray for her, but not as
much as I prayed for this baby. I begged
and begged God to save this baby. As
soon as I found out last Tuesday that I wasn’t measuring as far along. I prayed in faith by the outline of Philippians
4 “Rejoice
in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let
your reasonableness be
known to everyone. The
Lord is at hand; do
not be anxious about anything, but
in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be
made known to God. And the
peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything
worthy of praise, think about these things. What
you have learned and received
and heard and seen in
me—practice these things, and the
God of peace will be with you.”
I took my worries to him and I’ll tell you I did not feel peace during
the prayers. I didn’t feel peace as the
reality of another loss was hitting me. I
wanted to control and did all I could to try to find out what might be
wrong. I googled more than I care to
admit and struggled to turn to God. I didn’t feel this as I was living out
the beginning of the verse of surrendering my concerns and desires unto his
hands. I prayed my desire and I begged
for the life of my child. But as we all
know God’s word does not return void and today God’s peace has been in my
heart, possibly greater than it ever has before. The peace that passes all understanding and
human explanation has guarded me. Where we should have been broken God’s peace upheld us. We
prayed and prayed with passion and desire that God would save our baby but as
David got up and praised God after his baby died, so we choose to do so. His
word is perfect and true. I want to say
too, I have no 4 step plan to make this happen, this is the work of the Holy
Spirit and God through His living and active word.
We share our grief with our children
This has been a hard one for me. As soon as I knew that it was possible the baby might not make it, my heart just hurt to have to tell John and Abby and I struggled to know what to do.(tell them, ignore it, don't tell them etc.) Tonight as I was eating my 2nd Reese Pumpkin, John wanted to know why I was eating a 2nd treat, so I told him that I had been in the hospital today. And he asked “to get the baby out?” (he still remembers me going to get Hannah out at the hospital) In that moment, I just felt I needed to tell him the truth. “Yes buddy, we had to get the baby out, but the baby is in heaven with Jesus.” He looked really sad and said “we wanted to keep the baby, didn’t we?” I said yes, buddy we did, but the baby is with Jesus in heaven and God is still a good, good Father.
How to be in this
world but not of it, isn’t always easy
It’s not always cut and dry on how we are to be human yet be
filled with the spirit. God has given us
emotions and made us human: to feel, to be in relationship, to love and to
grieve. As Ecclesiastes 3 tells us, there
truly is a season for everything. I long
for heaven where the season of sorrow will be gone, but while we are still
here, we will always face those things that grieve us and weigh heavy on our
hearts. We will have those things that I
talked of before that we will never fully understand. We may be able to look
back and see the redemption, but sometimes we just don’t get it. One of my prayers as I walked through this,
mostly as I felt I was failing since I was trying to control and not trusting as
I should, was “God how do I glorify you through this?” Sometimes, it is very hard to know where our
human flesh and our spirit collide in a way that is perfectly pleasing to our
father. And of course, we are all sinful
and will always fail and fall, but we learn to be human in our grief and
sadness knowing that God is right there with us comforting us and present in
our darkness and hard times when we can’t even function. We make a choice to trust him and communicate
with him through the whole thing. I
haven’t figured it out and probably never will, but I will say that walking
through this has shown me the power of his peace and how sometimes it comes
after the struggle. It’s supernatural without a 10 step plan. It comes through surrender and trials. I wasn’t there with the first miscarriage,
and especially not with the 2nd, but today God has done something new
in my heart. There will most likely be
grief to come over my sweet baby, but I pray I grieve in the peace of God
knowing “When
the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their
troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in
spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him
out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” Psalm
34:17-20. But for today, I enjoy and rest in his supernatural peace.
